


The Year the Grammy Awards Were Actually Exciting

by Mithrigil, puella_nerdii



Series: Unicorn Records [1]
Category: Suikoden I, Suikoden II
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Music & Bands, Gen, THIS IS THE POWER OF ROCK!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil, https://archiveofourown.org/users/puella_nerdii/pseuds/puella_nerdii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riou wants to get a job, Jowy wants to avoid going to Princeton, Nanami wants to stop burning the pizza rolls, Highland Records wants summer employees, and everyone wants to know what happened to Tir McDohl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Year the Grammy Awards Were Actually Exciting

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of Unicorn Records, a Suikoden (I/)II boyband AU. What can we say, it actually works.

The last chords of _Glory, Beauty_ blast through the television’s speakers enough that the netting shudders, but no one reaches over to turn the volume down. Onscreen, Tir McDohl hands off his electric guitar for an amped acoustic, and sits on a stool center stage while the lights dim around him. The camera cuts through the audience, and they know what song’s coming just like Riou does, offscreen in his house in Tarrytown.

Like everyone else in his generation, he knows the riff of _Soniere_ by heart.

Nanami sighs and plops down next to him onto the couch. Popcorn flies out of the bowl she’s holding, lands between the couch cushions and in Jowy’s hair. “Hey!” he says, glaring up at Nanami from the floor.

“Shh! He’s going to sing!”

“I know he’s going to sing -- ”

Riou tunes them both out as best he can, turns up the volume on the television, and waits for the chills to start racing down his spine.

_The trees line the road like prison bars,_ Tir McDohl sings, his voice a thin weathered whisper into the microphone and the camera almost as close to his lips as Riou imagines himself in his dreams,  
 _The telephone poles, their wires crossed,  
And all I can think while driving through the wilderness alone  
Is that I never would, never could without you._

Nanami sighs again, and Jowy leans forward intently. Onscreen, the camera cuts briefly away to Flik’s hands on the lead electric, playing a distant echo over Tir’s riff, a voice without words --

“He’s not performing it the way he usually does,” Jowy says, his chin propped up on his fist.

“ _Shh!_ ” Nanami says. Her shushing is louder than Jowy’s voice. Riou knows it’s not wise to point that out. “Don’t talk over Tir McDohl, that’s really rude!”

“It’s not as though he’s here -- ”

“It doesn’t matter! You wouldn’t want it if someone talked over _you_ while you were performing, would you?”

“You’re talking over him, too,” Jowy points out crossly, and half-turns so he has one eye on Nanami and one on the television. Riou raises the volume another five notches.

_And no,_ Tir sings, the first chorus, _the door only opens from one side, the inside._ By now all of Liberation is behind him, Humphrey steady and powerful on the bass, Viktor brushing the drumkit, Flik on lead guitar. _Soniere_ has such simple, powerful instrumentation that they don’t try to dress it up, just the four core members, no smoke and no show, not even at the Grammy Awards. They’ve kept it to a wall of white light, just like the song describes, and all the better, because Tir, in focus, is giving the kind of performance that might just make Riou cry.

_And I’m by no one’s side at all_ , he mouths along with Tir at the end of the chorus. Tir looks up from his guitar, straight into the camera, and Riou knows Tir isn’t really looking at him but he might as well be, the way he seems fixed on something no one else can see. There might be lyrics in that somewhere, actually. Something about traveling towards a horizon you never quite reach...he’ll work on it more when he isn’t breathing along to _Soniere_ ’s bass line.

“It’s weird,” Jowy murmurs, “The chords are the same and so’s the instrumentation but the balance is different. Maybe it’s the sound editors --”

“Jowy! Knock it off!” Nanami drums the bowl of popcorn against Jowy’s skull.

“Ow! Nanami, what the hell?”

“You keep interrupting Tir McDohl!”

“I’m not interrupting him, he’s still singing -- ”

“ _Shh!_ ”

“It’s not like _I_ can hear him with you sighing every five seconds, either.”

Nanami flares bright red and thwacks Jowy soundly upside the head again. Riou would bury his face in the cushions if Tir weren’t still singing.

“The wall’s getting brighter.” Jowy points at the television. “It’s really subtle, but...”

Riou squints, and sure enough it is: as _Soniere_ builds to the last chorus, the lights behind the band flood the stage, until Tir and Flik and everyone are just black silhouettes, eaten away. Nanami doesn’t even chide Jowy for interrupting, only stares with the rest of them as Tir sings, one last time, _And I’m by no one’s side,_ before the wall consumes him.

There’s a moment of shocked silence, even in the star-studded Grammy audience, before the world erupts into applause. Nanami forgets about the bowl of popcorn in her lap and practically springs off the couch, clapping and clapping, and Jowy whistles softly. Some of the popcorn spills into Riou’s lap but he can’t brush it off, can’t even bring himself to clap. That final image still sears his mind -- Liberation swallowed by that blinding light. He fumbles for his notebook and a pen and starts scribbling:

_Swallowed (eaten? hidden?) by the spotlights / I stand before the world and no one sees me_

No, he swears he’s heard lyrics like that before. Too many lyrics like that, probably. He scratches out the last line and tries another: _An afterimage that they think is real_. Maybe _An afterimage they develop into something almost real_? There are a few places he could break up that line --

The oven screeches, and Nanami stops clapping and bolts just as the host says, “Tir McDohl and Liberation, ladies and gentlemen! Stay tuned, they’re up for their third Grammy this year, for their album, _The Border Guards!_ Can they beat Melodye? Join us after the break.”

“Oh no, the pizza rolls!” Nanami says from the kitchen. “Um, hold on, guys, I just have to cut off the burnt parts -- ow! Maybe I’ll wait a few seconds, ha, they’re still pretty hot.”

“I hope you still have your fire insurance,” Jowy mutters, then catches himself, looks down. “Sorry. I didn’t mean -- ”

“It’s okay,” Riou says, fishes a stray kernel of popcorn out of his shirt. “We do, I think. Grandfather’s life insurance covered most of those things, the lawyers said.”

“I miss him.”

Riou draws his knees closer to his chest. They’re playing an advertisement for that TV movie about Odessa Silverberg now, and he’s really not in the mood, so he hits the mute button. “Me too,” he says, quietly. 

Jowy clears his throat, pushes himself off the floor and onto the couch next to Riou. A kernel of popcorn is still tucked behind his ear, and Riou should brush it away, even if it almost looks like a flower -- no, he should definitely brush it away. He does, and Jowy blinks, then says, “Thanks.”

“So, um.” Riou looks down at the popcorn bowl, follows the reflection of the overhead lights in the curve. “We’ll be okay if I get a job this summer. Well, if we both get jobs. Me and Nanami, I mean.”

He hears Jowy shift on the carpet and knows what Jowy’s going to offer before he says it, so right as Jowy says, “I could always see if--” Riou interrupts with, “No, it’s fine.”

“I mean it,” Jowy says.

Riou smiles. “I know you do. But so do I. Besides, you’ve got to get ready for Princeton and everything.”

A cell phone commercial plays onscreen, and Nanami burns her fingers and apologizes for the delay. When Jowy turns back from the sounds in the kitchen, it’s like he looks straight through Riou, out the window. “We’ll see about Princeton.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll see, that’s all,” he says, and looks down again, scratches behind his ear the way he does when he has a headache coming on. “I’ve been thinking about Purchase, and--”

Nanami’s voice thunders through the doorway before Riou can respond: “Huh? Purchase what?”

At least Jowy stops scratching. “How are the pizza rolls, Nanami?”

“Almost ready!” she chirps, half-singing it. Riou hides his smile behind his hand. It’s not a hook he could ever use, or even the start of a melody line, but it’s nice to listen to all the same.

“We’re back at the 2012 Grammy Awards,” the subtitles say, and Riou scrambles for the remote to turn the volume up again and almost drops it in Jowy’s lap. Jowy fumbles to catch it on the bounce, and their hands crash together, then almost their heads.

“Sorry,” Jowy says, but doesn’t pull his head away just yet. Riou’s nose bumps up against his, and that startles a half-laugh out of him, his breath warming Riou’s cheek. Um. Riou’s lips part, because he should say something. _Sorry_ would be good. _Sorry_ isn’t coming out.

“Eat up!” Nanami says as she barrels back into the living room, and Jowy scoots back, probably to avoid the plate she drops in front of Riou. “There’s still a little bit of black stuff on the bottom of some of them, but you can always eat around it, right? The insides should still taste just fine. Hey, have they announced Album of the Year yet?”

“--shit,” Jowy says, “they’re running through the nominees.”

Riou turns the volume up.

“...and the winner is,” Griffith says, thumbing into the envelope with one bedazzled nail, “ _The Border Guards!_ Come on up, Liberation!”

The auditorium erupts into applause, but Nanami’s cheering louder than every single one of them. Riou claps until his hands sting, wonders if the sound can stretch all the way across the country or join with the other cheers and congratulations to form one swelling wave of sound, headed straight for Tir McDohl. Even Jowy nods in approval and says something about what Riou thinks is Melodye’s musicianship, but it’s hard to hear anything over Nanami.

But the cameras don’t show Tir McDohl. Plenty of people are applauding, but the aisles are clear, and the quick cuts backstage show only Viktor and Flik and Humphrey, looking around worriedly for a couple of blinks. Someone in the directors’ booth has probably just lost his job for letting that through live. But Flik looks at the other two and says, “Let’s just go,” and Viktor is already on his way out to the microphone before Flik finishes his sentence.

“Thanks, America!” he says, and snatches the statue up, waves it in the air and twiddles it like a drumstick. “I gotta say, I’m not a real big speech guy, but I know we should thank people, so here goes. So thanks to everyone who’s been with us through all this craziness, and thanks to everyone who thought maybe we weren’t just a bunch of crazies after all. Most of all, this one’s for Odessa and Mathiu Silverberg. Wherever you two are, I hope we did good by you tonight.”

Flik folds his hand around the microphone stand, nods and looks sidelong at Viktor before finding the audience again. “I don’t know where our fearless leader got to, but I know he’d want to thank his father too. So here’s to Teo McDohl and the Great Generals for getting Tir started so that he’d find his way to us.”

The camera cuts backstage again, but there’s no one on the mark but the model escort and a stagehand.

“So yeah,” Viktor says, “that’s that. Rock on, America!”

“And that’s our show!” Griffith cuts in, before the cameras have time to move elsewhere. “So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night -- at least until next year.”

“You were right,” Riou says to Jowy. “Something’s strange.”

***

**GRAMMYS 2012**

The hills are alive with the sound of _where the fuck is Tir McDohl?_ No way in hell am I the first person to ask it-- check these links if you don’t believe me--but I’m mostly making this post to get you all to stop asking if I know. I don’t know! I don’t know any more than the guy on the street, ‘cause guess what, I’m basically just the guy on the street, except I keep track of who’s going where a little better.

For those of you who live under rocks or got booted out of your streams last night, Liberation played a wicked set that turned out to be the prelude to their first Album of the Year. But when time came to accept the award, the four-man band was one man shy. Now, if it’d been Humphrey, I’m sure no one except me and Levenheit would have noticed, but no. Oh, no.

The General’s Boy is AWOL, kids.

So you can imagine after letting Vik and Flik take the trophy off for him, he had the good sense to either get an excuse or just keep away from the parties. As you’ve probably already figured out, he did the latter, and his management is about as radio silent as, well, a radio. But oh are the tabloids buzzing. I’ve been in correspondence with Dandy Richmond, who for once isn’t convinced that coke, aliens, or coke-sniffing aliens are involved. You heard it from me first, and I heard it from him first: he planned this.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. (No really I do know what you’re thinking. You’re right about the briefs but I don’t dress left.) Given Liberation’s track record and the tit-for-tat rotten luck that seems to follow every success they have like a creepy ex-boyfriend, it’s not a far stretch to cry murder. After the tragedies that befell Odessa Silverberg two years ago and her brother Mathiu barely two months ago, and the conspiracy theories surrounding Teo McDohl’s death last December, it’s only natural to assume that someone’s getting his John Hinckley Jr. on. But hear me out, and hear me out now because like hell I’m going to say it again: I think Richmond’s right.

Think about it! Tir McDohl’s disappeared before, more than once, when the going got tough. I mean, he’s never given himself the shepherd’s crook before (or is it the lonely goatherd’s this time?), and it’s not like him to walk out in the middle of a gig unless something major’s going on backstage. So something major might be going on! And it might not involve his untimely death.

I’m not saying we should call off the foxhunt, since I could be wrong (and it’d be vindicating, ‘cause like I said, this’d mean that Richmond’s right about something, which means that Richmond might be right about the Balinese Ducksuits, which is just not okay) and if I am wrong and we do have a major tragedy on hand, not just an upset, I’m going to be eating my words with a slice of humble pie every morning for the next year. But if I _am_ right, and I think I’m right, then I think we should let Tir McDohl come back from wherever he’s gone on his own time.

After all, it’s not like he took his music with him. I swear, even Classical NPR is gonna be playing Soniere any second now.

Don’t worry, kids. That blossom of snow will be blooming and growing forever, and he’s just assured it on national television.

Fitcher out!

***

“--and I bet they’ve locked him up in some dingy basement in the middle of the Nevada desert--”

“Do houses in the middle of the desert even have basements?” Jowy asks but Nanami’s running off at the mouth too fast to stop without her doing the spoken equivalent of crashing into a tree.

“And TMZ has photos of creepy guys in black hanging around near Liberation’s car and they say someone found an empty box of garbage bags in one of the trash cans and what if they cut him up into pieces just like they do on _Dexter_ \--”

Riou sighs. He told Nanami not to watch _Dexter_ , but she insisted that it wouldn’t give her nightmares.

“And look, they say it would have taken a _massive coast-to-coast coordinated effort_ to snatch Tir McDohl away right under the noses of every big shot in the music industry, and you know what _that_ means,” Nanami says, and takes a deep breath to steady herself. She probably has better breath control than Riou does.

“What does it mean?” Jowy asks, like he already has a headache coming on.

“Empire Records was based in New York, right? So there’s a big conspiracy right on our doorstep!”

“Oh, come on,” Jowy says. “Empire Records was disbanded, remember?”

Should Riou step in? No, it’s probably better to let both of them blow off a little bit of steam first. He crosses his legs and scoots back on the couch, rests his laptop on his knees. Every news site he’s looked at has the same headline: _where is Tir McDohl?_ And the articles that try to answer that don’t come up with theories much better than Nanami’s, so far.

“But not before Jowston Records bought some of their shares,” Nanami says, and crosses her arms over her chest resolutely.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because Jowston lost all their shares in Empire when Empire became Republic Records,” she says. “Let me pull up the post on tumblr, it has charts and everything.”

“Oh my god,” Jowy mutters, rolling his eyes.

“See? They must’ve been trying to get a controlling interest in Empire. Look at the dates of those sales, that’s right when the FBI started investigating Barbarossa. And look at the chart below it, too, it shows how much Jowston’s stock prices have been falling, and check out at how sharp it gets after everything they invested in Empire goes up in smoke.”

Riou could have sworn that Nanami spent most of economics class napping or doodling. Jowy must be thinking the same thing, because he says, “Nanami, didn’t you get a C-minus in economics?”

Nanami harrumphs, and Riou ducks even though Nanami’s a good five feet away. “The post explains it really well, okay? _Anyway_ , the point is that Jowston probably has a big grudge against Republic now, and if Jowston’s going down, they want to take Republic with them.”

“I have got to stop watching Bruce Willis movies with you,” Jowy says.

“And what’s the best way to hit Republic right where it hurts?” She pauses, expectant, her toe tapping prestissimo against the floor. 

“What’s the best way, Nanami?” Riou asks when it becomes clear that Jowy won’t. 

“Get rid of their biggest star, of course!” Nanami punches her fist into her palm, and the smack echoes throughout the living room. Silence falls after that, interrupted by Jowy scratching the back of his head.

“ _Well_?” Nanami says.

Riou has an mp3 of crickets chirping somewhere on his laptop, but he’s not mean enough to pull it up.

“Oh come on, neither of you have anything better!”

“There’s no way the three of us are going to figure it out on our own,” Jowy says.

Nanami’s glare is hot enough to melt metal. “So you’re okay with not knowing what happened, huh? You’re just going to--to lie there and take it?”

Riou pulls up a blank Word file and starts typing: _She’d sign a thousand petitions to save a starving kitten’s eyesight / Because no one ever told her not to care._ It’s probably the end of the first verse of something, something up-tempo and offbeat. He’ll work on it more later.

“Please don’t say that,” Jowy says, and his voice drops. When Riou looks up, he sees that Jowy’s head is down and to the side, and he’s picking at a loose thread in the carpet. Riou reaches down and rests his hand on Jowy’s shoulder before he thinks too much about it, but after Jowy starts a little he tilts his chin up and smiles at Riou, and it’s not like Riou can move his hand away after that, right?

“I want to help,” Jowy continues. “But I want to help in some way that actually _works_ , because otherwise I’m no help at all.”

Nanami huffs out a huge sigh and plops onto the arm of the couch, thuds her heels against the side. It’s much slower this time, each beat taking twice the length it normally would. “I guess,” she says. “It’s probably just a dumb theory anyway, right? Ha. It’s nothing, it’s just a dumb old tumblr post. Forget I said anything, okay?”

“It’s not a bad theory,” Riou says softly. He should probably take his hand off Jowy’s shoulder. Um. Eventually. “If I were at Jowston Records, I’d be pretty angry with Republic, I think.”

“And with Highland,” Jowy says. He glances at Riou’s hand, then looks away quickly, and Riou takes that as the signal it must be. Besides, Riou should get back to his job search. He takes his hand off Jowy’s shoulder, refreshes Craigslist’s part-time job postings. Maybe he should search for full-time jobs, too.

“Huh?” Nanami asks. “Did something else happen with Highland and Jowston?”

“I thought they were getting along,” Riou says. He brings up _That Didn’t Suck_ in another tab and browses through the Highland tag, but Fitcher’s newest post is just about that interview with The White Wolves in Rolling Stone. Fitcher hasn’t made any edits to that entry about Tir McDohl, has he? Riou refreshes the page, but nothing new appears.

“Maybe,” Jowy says, but he’s still frowning. “It never seems to last.”

Craigslist isn’t turning up much today, only spam and receptionist jobs. Riou sighs. He’s not great with phones, but maybe he could learn. There have to be some retail or restaurant jobs in Westchester County, don’t there? He keeps scrolling --

\-- wait. What does that one say? He highlights the link to make sure, but it looks like he wasn’t misreading things: _HIGHLAND RECORDS SEEKING GOFERS_.

Riou can’t click the link fast enough.

_www.highlandrecords.com/opportunities/summer_

_[If image is not displaying, check your browser settings.]_

_Looking for a summer job that rocks? Highland Records is seeking **gofers and stagehands** to support this summer’s shows in the tri-state area. Meet the bands, learn the ins and outs of the industry, and get coveted backstage access to some of the hottest acts around -- Sounds French, SFDF, the White Wolves, and many more!_

_Applicants must speak English and be capable of heavy lifting, and be available weekends and late nights. Great for students and part-timers! Highland Records is an equal-opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, or sexual orientation. Pay is competitive._

_Contact Highland Records through the form at www.highlandrecords.com/opportunities with your resume, two references (phone and e-mail), and working permit if required._

_HIGHLAND RECORDS: WE PUT ON A SHOW!_

“Jowy, Nanami,” Riou says, and grips his laptop more firmly, though that doesn’t stop his hands from trembling a little. “Look at this.”

“Huh?” Nanami leans over--and gives an excited squeak, nearly tumbles off the arm of the couch. “Jowy! Jowy! Highland Records is hiring?”

Jowy clambers off of the floor and peers over Riou’s shoulder. Some of his hair brushes Riou’s arm, but at least Jowy’s looking at the screen and not Riou, so that makes it easier. “It looks legitimate,” he says. “They wouldn’t have provided a link to Highland’s website if the opportunity wasn’t cross-listed there, too.”

“So do it, do it!” Nanami says, almost bounces on the cushions. “This could be our big break! What if you’re helping out backstage and you run into someone really famous, or what if your supervisor gives our demo to _their_ boss or something--”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Jowy says. “It’s rude to give the supervisor your demo and expect him to pass it on.” He looks down at Riou, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “We should still do it, though. It’s a good way to learn how it works in the industry.” 

Riou bites his lip to keep from smiling too hard, even if it doesn’t quite work. “Yeah.”

“Nanami, are you going to do it, too?” Jowy asks.

She looks up at her hairline, blows her bangs out of her face. “I have my hands full helping out at the dojo, and I promised sensei I’d take the seven-year-olds off his hands. But they’re really cute, so I don’t mind.”

It’ll be a little strange to do this kind of thing without Nanami there, but as long as Riou and Jowy tell her everything, it won’t be too bad, will it? Riou clicks on the link in the ad, waits for Highland’s website to load. “What kind of references do you think they want?”

“Leave that to me,” Jowy says.

Riou nods, and opens his resume file. “Do you think they’re okay with .docx?”

 

\---  
\--


End file.
